


Party Into the Void

by worldstealers



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Halloween, Halloween Costumes, Monster of the Week, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Party
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-05-22
Packaged: 2020-03-09 18:24:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18922564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldstealers/pseuds/worldstealers
Summary: A party planner is trying to throw the biggest Halloween bash of the season, but the arrival of two FBI agents investigating the disappearance of one of her performers is really screwing up the vibe. Will she be able to pull of a rave in the face of a possible murder? Or are her parties a little spookier than even she knows?This story was originally read and recorded as an episode of the World Stealers Podcast by guest star Shayna. Listen to us wherever you listen to podcasts!





	Party Into the Void

I woke up unassisted by my alarm the morning of Halloween, immediately excited, and surprised I’d been able to sleep at all. My first thought was to wonder who was going to work the third shift at the fourth jump-scare corner tonight. It had been my last thought before falling asleep, too, because my deranged entertainer had dropped out the afternoon before, and I had yet to get a solid replacement nailed down. All the good haunted house performers had been working for months and were already booked on their busiest night. But I’d be damned if the best Halloween party in the city, my Halloween party, went down over a crazed centaur.  
I crawled out of bed and started some coffee brewing. Out of consideration to my roommates and the early hour, I refrained from singing, managing to hold myself to a quiet hum with the occasional, “Ghostbusters!” It took me three cups of coffee to make a pile on the bed of everything I’d need to take with me when I went to set up the party - three costume changes, various pieces I’d promised to staff and attendees, and the mandatory spares for anyone who showed up without a costume. Thankfully with a lot of help I’d set up almost everything in the few days prior, but there are always last minute contingencies to prepare for.  
It wasn’t even 9am by the time I’d made it to the space. As I was climbing out of my car and wrangling my bags I saw two people in dour suits snooping around the building. I wrote it off as Halloween geocaching and let myself into the stairs up to the loft.  
I had a couple more cups of coffee and by the time everyone else started to arrive, I’d already been pacing around, adjusting fake cobweb, and mumbling to myself about blind corners for a couple hours. A Spotify radio station based on “Monster Mash,” was at full blast. I gratefully retreated to our green room to let the technicians, performers, and security settle in without me getting in the way. Through an episode of furious texting, I’d called in a favor to get a Burning Man satyr-type in retirement to cover my fourth jump scare, but he couldn’t make it until nearly showtime, so I was doomed to stress about that until the hammer dropped. Occasionally, my event manager, Karen, popped in with questions or decisions for me to sign off on. She was already outfited in dryad makeup and leafy capris. At some point, she ushered in the geocachers.  
I was midway through the intricate process of painting my face to look like a demonic black goat. I’d only practiced once before, following along with a Youtube tutorial, so I was feeling a little hopeless at my progress. I took a little solace in the raised eyebrows of both the serious-looking people now crowding into my greenroom. Simultaneously, they reached into their coats and pulled out badges.  
The taller of them, a white guy with dark finance hair and a squinting expression in his moody eyes, introduced them, “I’m Special Agent Fox Mulder and this is my partner Dana Scully. We’re with the FBI. Would you mind if we asked you a few questions?”  
“Uhh, sure,” I leaned forward to peer at their badges, and they helpfully thrust them closer to me. As if I’d know what to look for to distinguish counterfeit FBI identification. I didn’t think I had anything to hide, “Did you want to see my liquor license or something?”  
Scully had a focused expression as she stared at my half-painted face. “We’re here to investigate the disappearance of a girl named Darcy Jarp. Does she look familiar?” Scully pulled a picture out of a different pocket than her badge, and showed it to me. Darcy looked pretty unremarkable, with vaguely blond hair, blue eyes, and a forced-looking smile in what was obviously her acting headshot. Brick wall background. I looked up from the photo and shook my head at Agent Scully, whose looks one definitely could remark on.  
Mulder narrowed his eyes even further and cocked his head at me. “She was last seen working in the haunted house at your party, a year ago today.”  
Oh shit.That got my attention. I’d feel horrible if someone working my party got into any kind of trouble because of it, not to mention the fear of exposing my guests that night to any danger. I leaned back down to re-examine Darcy’s picture, but I still didn’t recognize her. Then I realized something.  
“If she’s been missing for a year, and this party was the last place she was seen, why haven’t I been questioned before now?” I hired plenty of people under the table, and there were several I’d probably never seen out of makeup. It was feasible that I’d had Darcy working at the party last year, but this was the first I was hearing about anyone disappearing.  
Mulder and Scully exchanged an inscrutable look, before Scully looked back at me. Mulder kept looking at the side of her face as she said, awkwardly, “Her disappearance wasn’t noticed immediately.”  
I let that hang for a minute, but neither of them offered any further explanation. Finally, mostly to cut the weird, I explained that I had no information on Darcy and I didn’t know how else I could help them. They exchanged another look, Scully’s vaguely dreading while Mulder held back some strange manic excitement. Mulder told me, “We need to be at your party tonight.”  
I wondered if their badges were, actually, fake. If this was some elaborate ruse to get into my party, the sheer audacity was flattering in itself. Feeling immediately more in my element, I settled back into my seat and added another swatch of contour to my goat face.  
“You’ll need costumes.”

~~~~~~~~

Usually I wouldn’t work the door at my own event, but I was pretty keyed up about having a couple of FBI agents at my infamously debaucherous Halloween party. Security and event staff had a heads up to encourage a new level of discretion, and I didn’t think agents Mulder and Scully were there to focus on a little chemical revelry from my guests, but it was a concern. The early entry ticket-holders were pretty sparse - to dedicated celebrants, a haunted house rave is a second or third Halloween night stop at the least - but the agents were definitely the type to be punctual to a party.  
They’d looked around the loft for an hour or two earlier that day, with the benefit of full house lights and limited interference. Mulder had focused on going around knocking on flats installed as temporary walls to create the maze of the haunted house and squinting at props. This year’s theme was Hades, so I’d made a lot of spooky Doric columns with harpies perched atop, and cloth rivers full of drowning souls coursing over the walls and ceilings. I’d made most of the props and set pieces throughout the year, but there were always some thrifted details - urns, rubber snakes, the kinds of things it was easier to buy. Mulder poked at my harpy statuary, rubbing one finger across her silicone torso before looking attentively at his finger, then smelling it.  
Scully made her way around the haunted house and the dance floor, zeroing in on personnel. She interviewed bartenders, bouncers, and actors about whether they’d worked last year and knew of Darcy outside the party setting. I didn’t pay much attention, but her questions did seem to upset a couple of the people who’d acted in the haunted house last year. Karen took care of them, taking them off to debrief and calm down. I concentrated on making sure anything that might be movable was securely fastened to something immobile.  
Mulder had focused his attention on one spot in particular, near the middle of the haunted house’s maze, and was thumping on a place where the partitions abutted an actual wall of the building. It was an awkward corner in the construction, and I’d painted it void-black with a sign reading TARTARUS. At some point I’d have a Titan pop out of it and try to grab people before a Zeus showed up to throw some lightning, a performance that could be an exciting one-off of the kind that kept word of mouth about my parties high from year to year. Mulder was doing his touch-and-smell routine to the black paint on the wall to Tartarus when Scully joined him. They started arguing softly, Scully looking annoyed and concerned, Mulder gesturing avidly at the wall.  
I trained all my eavesdropping skills and was able to catch a couple words of Mulder’s impassioned whispering, “...portal...her doppleganger...before she showed back up!”  
They both looked over to where I was, fussing with cobweb and trying to look innocent, then walked over.

“Have you ever noticed anything strange in the time you've been hosting parties here?” Mulder asked, cagey. 

“It's a Halloween rave.” I was unable to keep the derision out of my voice, “It's designed to be strange. Things are always going sideways. But certainly nothing like the disappearance of a staff member,” I thought briefly of the time in year two an actor had got blind drunk during their shift and fallen asleep barely concealed behind a curtain with a limp arm extended, causing a few of the guests on their own strange trips to think someone had died in the maze. That rumor had accounted for, by my estimation, a 5% increase in ticket sales the following year. 

Scully gave me an apologetic look, “Can we ask…what was your theme for last year's party?”

I didn’t see how it could matter, but I was already confused by these agent’s methods, so I answered without editorializing. “Enchanted forest. You know, fairies and sentient trees and stuff.”  
They exchanged one of their looks, Mulder with a wry sort of “I told you so,” expression. Scully looked downtrodden. After a beat, she said, “It really does seem that we’ll need to attend your party tonight. It may be possible that whatever caused Darcy’s disappearance is still active, and we’re hopeful that seeing everything in action will provide some insight.”  
I couldn’t imagine a more unwelcome intrusion, but I was used to rolling with the punches where parties are concerned. “I will make sure that you’re able to attend, and have the staff help you in any way they can, but I have to ask that you be discrete in your investigation. Obviously, I want my guests to feel safe and have fun, and your presence could be a distraction from that.” I gave them Karen’s number and they excused themselves.  
Now, they were here. Scully was in a modest, dark navy dress. High collar, ankle length, long sleeves, with a white bib in the front. Her red hair was pulled back in a loose bun, and she was carrying an Erlenmeyer flask, stoppered, with a glowing liquid inside. I couldn’t help but be pleased at the willingness of this buttoned-down officer of the law to participate in the magic of becoming someone else for Halloween. “Excellent Marie Curie,” I said approvingly, and she smiled a little bit at the recognition and nodded.  
Her partner was wearing his suit. When I turned to him, he lifted up his hands and said, “I’m a Man in Black.” He grinned in a way that he obviously thought was charming, clearly expecting it to slide.  
“So you didn’t bring a costume?” I asked coldly.  
“What’s the big deal? It’s a party, it’s dark, there’s plenty to look at, who will even notice if I’m not in costume?”  
“This party is costume-mandatory. No exceptions. As I said earlier.” There was no way I was gonna let this guy run around looking like a cop (and not the sexy hot-cop kind) and spook all of my guests. He started up with another complaint, but Scully silenced him with a look and a, “Mulder,” that made it sound like they’d already had this discussion.  
Without too much more protestation I brought them both inside, and Mulder to my stash of backup costumes. He was a tall guy, and I couldn’t imagine convincing him to get into a dress, so Lil Bo Peep, Cleopatra, and Jessica Rabbit were out. I didn’t have the patience or time to get him into any facepaint. Finally my hand fell on a day-glo lime green number and I grinned. I pulled out the full-body catsuit and handed it to him without a word. He took it equally wordlessly, glowering at me. I gestured him to the greenroom to change.  
When he came out, the practically fluorescent-green lycra was skintight, but the fabric was pretty thick and it fit him well enough that nothing too visually uncomfortable was happening. I heard Scully, behind me, choking back either laughter or tears. Mulder had the attached hood/mask pulled up, and the vacuous black eyes of its alien face covered all expression. Scully choked one more time and then got herself under control. There was a full length mirror just outside the green room. Mulder turned to check himself over. With the long green fingers built into the costume, he beckoned to his own reflection. Muffled behind the mask I heard him sigh and say, “Great.”

 

After that, the agents were kind enough to do as I’d asked and blend in. The house lights were down, fog machines and strobes and sound effects in full force, and guests were starting to line up in earnest. They were admitted in groups at about three-minute intervals, to experience the haunted house before coming through into the party itself. I could faintly hear shrieks and thumps from the haunted house above the music on the dance floor. I grinned. There hadn’t been any fires for me to put out yet, thanks to Karen’s impeccable management, and I was free to circulate and greet guests and friends. But I made sure I always knew where the agents were.  
They loitered around the exit from the haunted house for a while, Mulder in his little green man mask staring creepily at everyone who entered. He closely examined the partitions some more, then gestured to Scully when he found the curtain that led to the haunted house “backstage.” The two of them disappeared through the curtain. I cut across the room and followed behind them.  
In the dark behind the curtain ahead of me, I heard Mulder’s quiet, muffled voice, “I’m telling you, if the portal is here it’s active by now. Any one of the people who’ve gone through here could be changed.”  
“Mulder, I still don’t understand what your theory is, here! Maybe Darcy did change after her experience at this party, it certainly sounds like she was behaving differently toward the people who knew her, but that doesn’t explain the physical circumstances that led to her...death.” Scully’s whisper was intense. She was still holding her glowing flask.  
The way Scully said death was just as strange as the way Mulder had said changed. They’d told me that Darcy had disappeared just after my party, but apparently she was dead, and she’d been seen by people who knew her after the party last year? Any guilt I may have felt about following around and eavesdropping on federal agents was gone, as I considered the lies the agents had told me. What the hell was going on?  
Their whispers got lower as they moved along the close, curtain-built hallway that led around the perimeter of the maze, concealing the performers who did jump-scares on the guests making their way through it. At this time in the party, groups of new entrants were few and far between. As the agents went along ahead of me, I started to notice we should be running into people huddling backstage waiting to perform their scares. Where was my staff?  
I realized that Mulder and Scully were making their way toward the entrance to Tartarus that Mulder had seemed so focused on before. As I watched, mind still on the lack of performers in the maze and the reaming-out they’d be getting for abandoning their posts before their shifts were over, Mulder reached the place in the wall I’d painted into invisibility. As he reached it, a gigantic arm easily as big as he was and scaled in what looked like dark shale rock projected from the solid wall and grabbed him. The brief impression of a gangly, shiny green man in the fist of a stone giant made me laugh out loud in shock, and then Mulder was pulled back into the void that was apparently no longer a solid wall.  
Scully immediately cried out, “Mulder!” and ran forward, drawing a gun from somewhere. She dropped her flask and it broke, spilling glowstick juice everywhere. In the faint green glow she started to feel at the entrance to Tartarus, which was a black wall again, and look around furiously to see if there was some aperture she’d missed. I ran up behind her, panicky.  
“What is going on?!”  
She whipped around, gun trained on me for a second before she recognized the black goat face I was wearing, then immediately went back to feeling the wall, ignoring my question. I turned and ran to the front of the maze, grabbing my head of security from his spot near the door. “House lights on, now! Somebody could be hurt and we need to start clearing the party. Get everyone out through the backdoor. Don’t let anyone into the maze!”  
We’d been working together for years, and he’d seen me lose my cool before in frustration, but he didn’t hesitate to take me seriously and quickly jumped into action, starting with all the lights cutting on. The shadowy bowers with scarily grinning figures and bloody faces of the vulture-bodied women that seemed to subtly move in shifting lights were instantly transformed into props and sets, and I took off back toward the spot that I had called Tartarus.  
When I arrived, Scully was on the ground with Mulder. He’d ripped off his alien mask and thrown it on the ground, where it looked back at him with vacant reprove. His face was aghast, eyes wide and practically rolling uncontrollably, arms weakly moving as though trying to ward off an attack of organza. Scully had his head in her lap and her hands on either side of his face. She looked terrified, but her voice was steady, “Mulder, it’s me. You’re okay. What happened? Where did you go?”  
After a few long moments, Mulder’s expression calmed and he went still, beginning to focus up at Scully’s face. “Scully. It was - blackness. A prison. Giants, forces embodied, great monoliths - they were all trapped. They want to get out, Scully! They want out!”  
He jumped to his feet and whipped around to look again at the black paint on the wall, now in the full light utterly unconvincing as anything but a painted circle. Still in his costume gloves, he balled his prosthetically enhanced green fingers into awkward fists and pounded a few times, impotently, on the wall. Scully stood too, and watched him uncomprehendingly. I could hear my emergency medic at the other end of the maze, calling out to see who needed help. When Mulder stopped pounding, they both stood staring for a few long moments, before finally I cleared my throat to get their attention. “One more time, just what the hell is going on?”

~~~~~~

I was doubtful I’d be able to recover any good will to run my party again next year. Between the abrupt end of the party several hours before schedule, those planning to come late that had to be turned away, and the understandable assumption that I’d done something to allow things to go so terribly wrong, it was time for me to throw in the towel. Anyway, I’d have a hard time getting any performers again after the way they’d all been repeatedly grilled in the hours after the party.  
After the space had been cleared and Mulder recovered his wits, I’d sat down with them in the remains of my party. The medic’s attempt to check him out had been rebuffed by Scully, who examined him herself. His only complaint, once his shock wore off, had been of sore ribs. Unzipping part of his green catsuit, I’d seen over Scully’s shoulder a deep bruise forming around his ribcage, like the impression of a giant finger.  
The two agents asked me for a list of the performers who’d been working the maze, and we’d made sure they were all accounted for together. There were some, though, that seemed dazed. Most of these were the people I’d noticed as not being present at their stations throughout the maze as I was following Mulder and Scully toward Tartarus. When I mentioned that detail, Mulder got a knowing, far-away look and Scully frowned. They left, without explanation, still in costume, but in the days that followed, many of the same people complained to me that the agents had pulled them in for long, rambling interviews about their familiarity with Greek myth and any strange dreams they might have had recently. Several had to refuse requests that they be hypnotized. All were confused, but seemed to share a general sense that I was to blame for their unpleasant experiences.  
It took me a while to accept the idea that my party was over. Near Thanksgiving, when I was at the height of my disappointment, already wondering what I was going to do for Halloween next year, something came over me. I took a train to Washington, D.C., and went to the Federal Bureau of Investigations headquarters. I didn’t make it past the lobby before my good sense stopped me, just short of making a huge fuss in a building full of law enforcement officers. After, I sat there, wondering why I’d bothered to come down here, feeling even more sorry for myself than I had before, when I spotted Scully’s bright red bob with Mulder’s tall frame beside her. They were striding purposefully in intense conversation, but they stopped when I called out to them.  
“Agents Mulder and Scully! I can’t stand not knowing what happened. Why did you do all those weird interviews? Why won’t you explain what you were investigating? Please! You have to tell me something. I need to know the truth!” I could feel myself tearing up in frustration, shouting.  
The two of them looked back helplessly. We were separated by the security checkpoint and I was making kind of a scene. Mulder had a particularly pained expression, which he turned on Scully. She returned a tiny, regretful shake of her head. I stared them each in the face, a long beseeching look, but nothing was forthcoming. So I turned around and left, and tried to put the whole thing out of my mind.

In January I got a package. There was no return address. On top was an unmarked manilla folder, with photocopies of some old city planning records inside. They dealt with the construction and inspection history of the loft building where my party used to be held. The name of the original builder was highlighted, along with a few later passages about “problems maintaining structural integrity along the north wall,” and “difficulties completing work on schedule due to high incidences of workers walking off the site without indication.” According to the records, most turned up again at home with no memory of the job they’d been working.  
Also in the folder was a small flash drive. I plugged it into my computer and tried the compressed video file on a few players before I got it to open. The footage was short, just about ten seconds long, and obviously pulled from a security camera. The timestamp dated it to sometime late night in early August of the year before. Though I hadn’t recognized her from my own memory, the woman onscreen was obviously the same Darcy Jarp the agents had shown me in pictures. The security footage was from an ATM vestibule, but Darcy wasn’t withdrawing any money. She paced the length of the vestibule once, then twice. As she turned to make a third pass, she looked up toward the camera for just a moment. Then she exploded into a cloud of something that looked, in the limited black and white color palette, like glitter.  
I watched the clip a few times, then uttered a soft, “What the fuck.”  
In the package, there was one more item at the bottom. Bright green lycra, with two bulbous black eyes staring up at me. A note pinned to the costume said, simply, “Thanks for the loan.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! If you liked the story and want to hear it dramatically read aloud, check out our podcast, World Stealers, on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you choose to listen!
> 
> https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/worldstealers


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